Effect & Cause
by CherryFlavoredChalk
Summary: Love took me prisoner without a kiss for memory's sake, slit my darling's throat and ran far away. Pity me, little child, for I'm a sinner and I'm in too deep. Roxas&Axel.
1. little boys

**a/n:** This is a mistake. Total error, kids. I meant to do Spaffy's AxelKairi one-shottie, as well as get around to PS and asking people what they wanted for drabbles? And is this either? No, this is a spiel. A spiel that wouldn't leave me alone. Ah, well, whatever. Enjoy.

* * *

_the weather is changing & breaking my stride_

_-_

_-_

_-_

The lights never went out on the street corners, didn't extinguish if he squinted at them and willed them to disappear. He flicked his fingers to his sides, catching at the cheap cotton and pulling it away from his skin, out nearly enough to make it seem like a tent. Like he'd grown tired of filling up both skin and cloth and was retracting back into his bones. Like he was a skeleton—no, wait, a zombie. Much more terrifying and badass than a shambling assemblance of bones.

Roxas, the zombie.

He spread his arms out to the side and inhaled, his eyes peeling back against the curve of his eye sockets. It felt kind of stupid and kind of great…like being little all over again.

But he'd stopped that a long time ago. Packed away his childhood and exchanged it for almost-adulthood, which sucked. He didn't want to be an adult. He didn't want to slog through his father's nine-to-five, knock up some girl and pay for his bouncing baby brats to push people over in the hallways and steal other kids' lunch money. It was totally fine because he wasn't the only one who wanted it— Naminé wanted it just as much and almost as bad. She didn't want to grow up, either—cut her hair off and stop painting and wear pinstripes in a way that wasn't ironic. Irony's dead, said Naminé's brother, but they were zombies, so weren't they allowed to use it anyways, in terms of clothing and speech?

_Upper crust, bitches!_ thought Roxas smugly as he nudged the overflowing trashcan with his foot. It fell over, emptying Bud Lites and prepackaged salami into the street.

"I can't commit to anything, be it heart or hospital." Roxas muttered to the concrete rotating under his feet. Or, it seemed like it was rotating. That could've been the weed. He'd never actually smoked it, but Nam had turned up on his doorstep with a shitty report card and a better bag of cannabis. They lit some of it on fire in his backyard before they decided to steal a bong from her brother, who was, like, the Crown prince of Cannabis at his community college.

"You stole that shit from Patrick Stump." Naminé said idly, uncapping the overpriced bottle of nail polish she'd shoplifted from CVS. It was a murky violet, and she sniffed at it hesitantly before layering it on her toenails. "I hope he sues you and kills your baby."

"You're _my_ baby." Roxas cooed. He stretched his fingers towards the slice of skin beneath her tank top and her shorts; she giggled, brushing his hands away. In the shadows, he could see slivers of her hair reflecting off of the streetlights. It shone orange in the bad lighting, and he informed her, "Your hair's orange. Like, um." He tried to assemble his mind and birth something original and fantastic. "Cheap orange juice."

Naminé looked thoughtful. "Tropicana or Sunny D?"

"Tropicana."

"Fuck, man!" She laughed, falling onto her back. Her hair—yellow in the sun, white in focal point of winter, orange under the night—spread around her head, like an unhealthy halo. Her eyes were bloodshot and cracked, the irises standing out like the marbles he used to collect when he was a kid. Blue marbles, unlike the ocean or the sea breeze or bluebirds. Like balls of wax, manufactured by Crayola on a gutless assembly line.

She was a different kind of beautiful.

"I'm high." Roxas told her. He edged his hand through her hair—thin strands like a baby's. Clean. It smelled like cheap shampoo, bought from Ocean State Job Lot. Plastic strawberries and cotton-ball kiwis. "I'm totally high."

"I know." Naminé grinned. She picked herself up off of the lawn and pressed her nose to Roxas's—Roxas, who she loved like a sibling, like he was a part of her. _Love you, Roxas._ (with all my little dyke heart)—and said it fast, like someone was watching and counting down the seconds until they'd cause them both to implode. "I know."

**[x]**

They were angels, or something like it. Or a one-act play, one of those things that Naminé read out loud to him in her backyard about feminist empowerment and socking it to the man and other things he probably had to have ovaries and a uterus to understand.

They were like different stories rushing together. Naminé could be Cinderella with jeans and a ratty t-shirt, sweeping her way up to Prince Charming (or Roxas, whichever one she was in the mood for) with her wit and her weed. Except nobody ever knew who prince Charming was—good-looking, loaded, and pretentious, maybe. Roxas was two out of three.

Except his precious princess was a flannel-wearing dyke whose brother sold her marijuana and made "modern art" (or Some Trippy Shit, which is what Roxas called it) in the local art studio a couple of miles over. She drew pictures of naked women and liked to beat Roxas senseless with her talk about feminism and sexuality and (gag) Larxene.

Larxene, who was some trailer-trash-hippie-bitch that he'd never met. Larxene, who probably didn't shave and talked like she hated men but secretly gave blowjobs to passing pedestrians and fellow classmates. Larxene, who was "just gorgeous, Rox, I think you'd really like her" and who he didn't want to meet at all.

Meet her in order to _kill_ her, sure. But it didn't go far beyond that.

Larxene the beautiful. Larxene the talented. "She's just so natural, you know?" Nam gushed over the phone. He could hear her scraping away at something in the background; probably a canvas. Making a picture of the lovely Larxene, who was probably some masculine girl with a voice like a bad set of speakers. Probably wore hiking boots. Shit, _Roxas_ wore hiking boots (sometimes).

They're sitting outside again. This time, it's by the school's utterly pointless brick wall. Naminé looks at him and says nonchalantly, "There's this rave tonight."

"Yeah?" Roxas hates raves. Too much contact, too much heat. He'd gone to a rave with Kairi and Sora and woken up in the backseat of Kairi's Vegan-Mobile with his jeans unzipped and a tablet of E glued to what little chest hair he possessed. Never again.

(But he'd go if she asked him)

She nods. "Yeah." Biting into her hummus and falafel, she adds, "Larxene told me about it. It's gonna be totally killer, Rox, you should show up."

NO, he thought, and he smiled. Larxene's raves were the very-very-gay ones, where everyone was homosexual or bisexual or transsexual, and straight people were definitely a minority. They'd probably try to rip off his clothes and make him sing Boy George when his back was turned. "Don't think so."

"Whatever." Nam shrugged, because that what she did—she was so mellow and easy-going and passive and---fuck, he hated her sometimes (or thought he did).

**[x]**

But he shows up anyways. Naminé is doing that closed-off thing that she does when she's pissed; her lips pleat themselves into a line and the veins in her translucent forehead start to protrude slightly. Her eyes close the curtains on her baby blues, and her voice is pitched one octave higher as she says, "Punctual as always, Roxy. Let's go in, okay?"

And he's worse than stupid because he asks, "Where's your butch buddy?"

"Elsewhere." she snaps, and grabs his wrist, tugging him inside.

The dance hall's lit up with strobes and garlands of glow-sticks strung up on the wall. There's a transvestite that he vaguely remembers meeting at Naminé's Sugar Gay Sweet Sixteen messing with the turntables and playing a cracked-out techno-version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, occasionally taking breaks to scream something into the sweaty crowd. It's either "Gay pride" or "Get laid"—both of which don't concern Roxas in the slightest. He keeps close to Naminé, a cautionary hand on her hip as she flits around and greets people.

It is here that Roxas realizes that he's seen the majority of these ravaging rave-heads at least once; there's Sora, who he vaguely remembers bragging in the locker room about having "seriously scored" over the school's last vocational break. Everyone had assumed it was Kairi—however, Sora's "scoring" also seemed to include his best friend, who managed to keep a hand down the brunet's jeans while muttering lyrics under his breath.

Zexion, resident nerd and all-around snitch, straddling the co-captain of the lacrosse team. He was certainly dolled up—the Oxford shirts and argyle sweaters eschewed for leather and something that appeared to be a cowboy hat. Roxas laughed right into Naminé's ear; it was like _Brokeback Mountain _meets _I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry_. The two of them swiveled past a crowd of boho-beatnik lesbians demanding that the DJ put on some Ani Difranco (Olette was one of them; she shot him a nervous, deer in the headlights look of I'm-totally-lez-don't-tell-my-mom before smiling triumphantly at him and turning back around) and made their way over to a corner where it was somewhat quiet.

"You want?" she asked, holding out a cigarette. She stuck it between her lips, smearing lipstick over the paper and cocked an eyebrow.

Because he wants her to think he's at least some semblance of cool and totally whatever about everything he says, "Yeah, okay" and leans forward to accept the passage of smoke into his mouth. It's not sexy or cultured or anything—it's actually pretty fucking gross, but he supposes that Naminé needs to look cool in front of this little collection of the very gay and the very confident.

But then she presses forward to press her lips to his, and it's all over, the curtain closing down.

**[x]**

Roxas doesn't know what scary is until he finds out he's fucked his best friend.

He faintly remembers the rave from last night, being offered cigarettes and E by Naminé and her host of dyke pals, and music by the Culture Club. He remembers Naminé offering to drive them back home and being unable to successfully operate the car without dropping the keys into his lap.

He does not, however, remember fucking his best friend in her car. Trauma has a way of blocking this, of which Roxas is extremely grateful for.

He's sneaking his way out of the car when she wakes up and catches him with his foot up and over the door. She looks at him, tired and blonde and beautiful and everything he used to want. Blows a strand of hair out of her sight and says, "Good morning to you too, baby."

There is nothing to say. _I'm sorry I fucked you. Did I tell you I loved you?_ There is nothing to say.

He says, "Get back together with your dyke."

She scowls and leans over the door, her breasts all but spilling out of her bra. Two weeks ago, he would've looked and she would've teased him about it. Two weeks ago, he would've threatened to grope her. But not now. Everything is so achingly, achingly different now.

Her lipstick is smeared on the side of her cheek as she snorts, "Whatever, man."

_Whatever, man_. She's such a fake-phony-liar-bitch. But he kind of loves her and doesn't want just sympathetic-sex from her while she pictures Larxene's face in her mind or something. He's not that far gone yet. He bites his lip and offers, "I don't remember anything. Was it that bad?"

Naminé looks at him with disgust. _Whatever, man_. (She probably doesn't remember anything either).

And because he loves her enough to die and scatter his pieces to the wind, or something hideously poetic, he bites, "I can't believe we did it in your car. That is so fucking lame. Did you do your precious Larxene in your car, too? Rut next to the steering wheel?" Her eyes are watering up from the sting of his words, and he proceeds. "Under the seats? Shit, on top of the cars? Whoa, Nam—would you like an award for that? Huh? Huh?"

She looks at him like he's something she's stepped in. "Fuck you, princess." She fiddles with the keys and urges the car to start up, driving one-handed into the distance.

"Slut!" he calls after her, because he can.

She flips him off; the gentle arc of a manicured nail in the hazy sunlight.

**[x]**

"You look like you just got your ass dumped." The man next to him said cheerfully. He lit up a rolled paper strip of something-or-the-other and drew in deeply, his eyes trained on the ceiling of the dance hall.

Roxas shrugged. "She's gay."

"Oh, ouch." The man winced as if he felt sorry for him, but the smile still remained. "A Sapphist of the highest degree, huh? A lesbitarian who graduated cum laude? You poor schmuck." He laughs, far too loudly, and reaches out to Roxas. He shies away like the other man's a leper and counters, "Thought you had weed?"

"I've got something better."

Roxas eyes him warily and straightens, mouth pulled into a frown. "You pull that shit out and I'll cut it off."

The man looks amused and rummages in his jacket for some spare hash that he probably hasn't even got—and then he stops, looks Roxas in the eye and says, "You ever wanted something really badly?"

_What the hell?_ "I guess."

"What was it?"

Roxas scowls and backs away. "None of your business." He turns his back and saunters away, thumbing his phone in his pocket. Naminé definitely isn't going to come pick him up from wherever the hell she went. His mom's still out in Cairo, fucking men and arranging business corporations to meet each other. And pathetic as it is, he doesn't really _know_ anyone at school but Nam. Yeah, the kids from the rave—but in passing, and they were long gone, taking their drugs and dance moves with them. Oh, yeah; Nam's brother. He could call him. _"Hey, I'm stranded, 'cause I called your sister a slut and she left. Come pick me up?" _Yeah, sure.

The man was scrambling after him, his cherry-colored Doc Martens flapping in the breeze. "What if I gave you everything you've ever wanted?" he shouts, and Roxas cringes. Um, no. he doesn't really want anything from this cracked-out pseudo-hobo slash pusher slash whatever he is. Except for the cannabis, and the man didn't even have that. Or, you know, leftover E or _something_. The man was totally cleaned out; how useless.

A ride home was everything he'd wanted right now. _A ride home_. But the guy'd probably grope him in his car and steal his Precious Gift. Either that or murder him, like that guy in Milwaukee.

He calls Demyx.

"Everything and anything!" the guy screeched as Roxas dialed the number and waited for Naminé's brother to pick up on the other end. "C'mon, whaddya want?"

"To get home." Roxas told him. He was a little pissed off, and a lot more tired. He'd screwed over his best friend and the Crazy Guy had no drugs to offer him. He was so done with this scene. "To make up with my friend. To graduate with at least five brain cells not deleted from the pot. To, I don't know, be fucking awesome." Uh, okay. How uncool was that?

The man shook his head as Demyx (finally) picked up, gracing the blonde's ears with a sleepy, _"H'lo?"._ He persisted, "But what do you_ need_?"

"Hey, Demyx, it's Roxas. Can you come pick me up?" He covered the receiver and shouted, "What are you, my fairy godmother?"

"Something like that."

_"Roxy? Where're you? Oh, wait, you're by the rave, right? Uh. Sure. Five minutes, top. That good for you?" _

"Yeah, okay." He said into the phone, before turning to the useless I-have-no-weed-but-I'll-randomly-grant-wishes man. Roxas looked him over; youngish, oldish, cracked-out and bloodshot eyes. Most likely clinically insane and hiding a machete in his Doc Martens. _"All you need is love."_ He sang to him, smirking. _"Love, love, love. Love is all you need."_

The man blinked rapidly, his strides quickening as he stepped out of his too-large shoes and patted Roxas's cheek. The boy tried not to recoil; he smelled like sweat and dirt. And hand-sanitizer. It's not working, buddy.

In his socks in the middle of nowhere, the man patted Roxas's cheek and said sympathetically, "Boy, you're in for a whole heap of trouble."

* * *

**a/n:** Lyrical credit to The Beatles, Tegan and Sara, etc. You're so far down, why not just review?


	2. all dressed

**A/N:** ...And the plot thickens. Oh, but not really. Credit to The Dresden Dolls for awesomeness known as "night Reconnaissance" and "Dear Jenny".

* * *

_boys wear overcoats in heat like this to keep themselves from showing_

_-_

_-_

_-_

It should've seemed like some weird, E-induced dream; however, he remembers everything with perfect clarity—from the rave to Larxene's bailing to the subsequent argument to the bizarrely useless (uselessly bizarre?) man in the middle of nowhere. He remembers being driven home by Demyx, who, surprisingly, was not supremely stoned and even managed to be mildly coherent. He remembers stumbling through the door, only to be greeted by his mom's howling of _"Baby, where _were_ you?"_ and collapsing on the wooden floorboards of his room.

In the morning, he wakes up to the Beatles and Naminé's grinning face as she croons lovingly, "Mary, you look like hell."

Um, okay. Roxas might be a pothead of the highest order, but he still remembers the entire fight from the previous evening—the yelling, the knitted eyebrows, the whole _whatever, man_ affair.

He unsticks his face from the boards and, checking his face carefully for splinters, mutters "Ehhh …sorry, yanno about…well, you know." to Naminé's left arm. He nudges his face against the crook of her elbow and adds lamely, "I mean it." God, this is so sad; you would think, maybe, that after seventeen years of slogging through social interaction, he'd at least be able to concoct a halfway decent apology. It was to be expected, right? It was something every kid knew how to do—please, thank you, you're welcome, I'm sorry. But Roxas was a non-conformist, right? He ate ideals for breakfast and ground society's suggestions underneath his f.

Roxas was _different_. Naminé was _different_. They had sworn to each other to be radicals, to be the modern versions of Jack Kerouac and Sylvia Plath but—

It seemed ridiculous now. A little bit silly, a little stupid.

Roxas stretched his fingers out along the length of his friend's thigh, curling his nails around the fringe. It was a little like Peter Pan---Naminé could be his ever-exasperated Wendy Darling in torn flannel, he could be the titular boy-hero with a bag of hash for fairy dust. _That's kind of gay_, he thought sleepily. If he'd said it aloud, Nam would've countered with a snappish _"How very _straight_ of you, Rox-ass_" and ruined everything that felt right in this piece of time.

But it died anyways.

"Hey, you wanna do something today?" she asks, playing with his hair. She sifts her hands through it like she's searching for gold (or dandruff, which is more likely) and scrunches her nose upwards as she admits, "Dunno what we'd do, but you wanna just go some place? I just feel kinda…nevermind."

"Nevermind like Nirvana?" This is proof of how in love he is (was). She still has the ability to make him say absolutely idiotic things. Maybe if she put a paper bag over her head it'd be better.

She laughed. "Whatever, man." She dropped her hands from his head and eased herself upwards, smoothing out a few of the thousands wrinkles on her jean shorts. They frayed at the bottom and Roxas had the urge to pull at them, tie them together and play cat's cradle. Nam used to force him into playing when they were younger, tugging him across the street to instruct him where to lift the strands of pink yarn. _"Nooo, Roxy, like this!"_ she would whine, and arrange his fingers to the appropriate places. Did she still have the yarn? He wanted to know, but didn't quite know how to ask.

It didn't really matter anyways because (whatever, man) Nam was reaching for his hand and yanking him upwards, talking like a train wreck and smiling like everything was going her way.

**[x]**

He was sitting on the handlebars of the bike she'd bought when they were eight when she inclined her head towards him and asked, "Remember when you thought you loved me?"

How do you answer something like that? 'Remember when you thought you loved me?' That could've been today, or yesterday, or five years ago. How was he supposed to answer that? He cleared his throat. "Uh." Yes, yes—when in doubt, make noncommittal grunts.

"Fifth grade. It was winter, remember? You made that stupid card with the balloons on it—it said 'Congratulations, graduate' for Christ's sake. _Gawd_." She laughed, not unkindly, and fiddled with the pink-and-white streamers falling from the handlebars. Reaching forward, she prodded his back with a finger and added, "Remember, Roxas? 'Member what it said? I don't."

She's lying now, and doesn't mean it to be rude. She just wants to hear him say it, is all.

"_Dear Naminé_—" Roxas says grudgingly. She cuts him off and interjects, _"Nami"_, complete with a high-pitched giggle he's never heard before. He begins again, "_Dear Nami, I think I love you. From, Roxy_."

"Postscript!" sings Naminé from behind him.

He sighs and admits, with a slowly reddening face, "_P.S.-A lot_."

She giggles again and he says something like "Shut up, it's not that funny" to which she replies, "Yeah-huh, pal of mine". Then it gets quiet, and she fiddles with her ponytail while he squints at the street-lamps at the end of her street and wishes that he had somewhere else to be.

"You still feel like that?"

_Say what now? _"Uh." Now, now, Roxas, use your words. Primitive man has come a long way since then—use the nouns and verbs that Merriam and Webster have been so kind to give you! "Um?" …Or retreat to being a Cro-Magnon retard, which is also fine.

"I'm asking if you still love me?" Naminé questions, squinting up at him. The tone of her voice isn't attractive in the slightest and there's a lilt up at the end of her voice like it's up for debate. Kairi talks like that a lot—all open-ended questions and uncertainty. It's kind of disgusting. It's kind of gross. And now she's imitating all the people that they'd sworn to hate, and what is he supposed to do with that?

Discreetly, Roxas begins to sweat.

She looks up through her eyelashes at him and says slowly, "What I mean is, what I really want to say is—" She coughs, hacks some phlegm out of her throat, and it isn't at all elegant or pretty when she barks, "Can you love me?"

Freeze. Freeze. Freeze.

"What?"

Naminé bites her lip like she's thinking about taking it back when he gets it. For the one time in seventeen years, Roxas _gets_ it. He tries to twist around on the handlebars without falling, but that was obviously a plan that wasn't made to work because she and he—doubling as Jack and Jill without pails of water---go tumbling down to the gritty area of the cul-de-sac. The bike presses into the soft flesh of Naminé's stomach as he leans over her and says, "Yeah, I-I think I can do that."

**[x]**

They are a picture-perfect couple.

His mother couldn't be prouder, boasting that she knew that Naminé would "come around to being heterosexual, it's only natural". Sora&Kairi&Riku (like a three-headed monster oozing cat-calls and affection) swung around to coo at them through the school's hallways whenever they saw them holding hands. Hayner and Pence snickered at them, telling everyone (no one) who would listen that they always knew it would happen. Naminé's own parents seemed almost obscenely grateful—they were, Demyx told him, not such big fans of Larxene.

In fact, Demyx is the only one who doesn't seem to be a card-carrying member of the Roxas Club. Not to say that he's standoffish, he just—ignores Roxas a bit more, speaks a little colder and a little slower. He always seems to be out whenever Roxas is over, his voicemail always greeting him with a fervent, _"Hey, it's Demyx!"_

He asks Naminé what's up; she rolls her eyes and counters, "Boy PMS" before snuggling back into his side. (They don't talk much anymore. He used to dream about touching her, but now he dreams about holding a conversation with her.)

Demyx ignores them and everyone wishes them well and they hold hands in the hallway. He opens the car door for her; they go Dutch on dates without any preamble. They've memorized each other's orders at their favorite restaurants (blueberry pancakes with powdered sugar, maple syrup, and whipped cream for Roxas, a large coffee for Naminé), they play each other's favorite songs in the car. He lets her back Alanis and Ani in his room; she has begun to tolerate endless sessions of Amanda Palmer wailing about how she wanted a coin-operated boy with a pretty coin-operated voice. She would bury her head into the junction of his neck and shoulders and call him honey or sweetheart or baby. _I love you, I love you, Iloveyou. _

He visits Demyx once and asks for some cannabis—not the expired shit, he hates that—and the man grins, jabs a finger towards the doors down the hallway and sings, "Go see your woman, loser."

Naminé doesn't wear her custom-made costume of cut-off shorts and ripped t-shirts. She's a bit more demure, less brash. She wears whitewhitewhite sundresses and perfume that smells like cheap sunsets and sugarcane.

He dreams of his lady love and wakes up screaming.

* * *


	3. in white

"You're so nice, and you're so smart. You're such a good friend; I have to break your heart."

* * *

It's getting to the point where he's outright avoiding her—ducking around the corners in the hallway, sprinting back home on a different path to prevent from seeing her face. He shuts his phone off whenever he sees the Nokia lighting up with an _Incoming: Naminé._

Incoming, indeed.

Sora, who sits next to him in Spanish and hasn't talked to him (_really_ talked to him, that is) since eighth grade, unlocks his face from Kairi's and says, "Hey, do you dig her or what?"

"The fuck?" Roxas snarls and feels a bit terrible when Sora flinches. But not terrible enough to apologize like he means it. "Uh, hang on." He's got a text from Naminé—_meet up after Spanish? I miss you! Luv Nami. _

Sora jabs his finger at Roxas's phone, helpfully telling him that he has four missed calls. "She's all over you like white on rice, huh?" he laughs, tapping the Nokia's screen. His hands are greasy and smell of french fry oil. This isn't surprising—Kairi, in an attempt to act like she actually cares about Sora and his idiocy, buys him lunch from Wendy's everyday. This (and making out with him between classes) is the extent of her affection. Besides, word on the street is that the school's sweetheart has a thing for Olette, anyways—in a weird, keep-it-on-the-down-low way.

Because cheerleaders don't date the captain of the Mathletes, despite whatever movies the public may've been exposed to.

"So, Rox." Sora says, edging his _stupid idiot moronic good-looking future-frat-boy_ face into Roxas's face, "You boink her yet?"

He flips him off—and does not give a shit when Sora's face falls.

**[x]**

Saturday brings booze and weed and Hayner chugging shot after shot and lining sugar up against Kairi's bared stomach amid her yowlings of, _"Watch it, okay? I just got this shirt! Do not mess this up!"_ Pence is making bongs out of apples and hiding them in the cupboard where Luxord bleats that _youcan'tfuckingdothatmymomwillflip! _and Olette is rolling her eyes and her hips and her fingers in some bizarre come-hither-fellow-lesbos to the girl across the room, who looks like she's interested but too busy giving Xigbar a lap dance to move away.

It is bursting with people. Roxas presses his fingers to the wall and imagines people spilling out, bodies fastened together and oozing out into the road.

Sora is going, going, gone—doing body-shots with Riku, too drunk for anyone to plaster his face to their blog "that homo". Someone's gone and invited Xemnas—who is crazy as hell and twice is good-looking; he's parading around the room in his boxers—the girls mewl in disgust and snap pictures with their phones. Luxord looks like he's hysterical—eyes rimmed red as he watches Vexen and Rikku and Saix and jeez, his little teenybopper-eighth-grade-shiny-shoed-n-pigtailed sister, Alice (poor kid) do lines on his mama's coffee table. He goes appropriately batshit. _Youguyshavetostopmymomisgonnaflip! _The music is too loud and too awful and he can hear Sora screaming, "I'm gonna slap a BITCH!" in the background, his voice shot to hell and back.

It's more hysteria than anything, and he knows this better than anyone. He was this just seven weeks ago. Average high-and-mighty stoner with zero to negative common sense but the ability to build a bong with his eyes closed. What was wrong with him? He should be inside doing body shots, licking sugar off of Kairi's collarbone, maybe boning Naminé in Luxord's bed, her nails digging into his back and listening to everyone turn down the dial and listen in like they paid for it at the movies.

Except he doesn't do much weed anymore (Naminé won't buy it, Demyx won't give it), and body shots bother him 'cause he's never quite sure what to do with his hands. And he and she had tried to do the whole we're-young-we're-in-love-or-at-least-we-hope-so thing and have sex but—touching her body kind of made him want to puke.

There is nothing left in that house for him.

"Emo much?"

He cranes his neck upward to see Demyx, who appears to be taking up the entirety of the night sky. He even appears to block up the music—just yards and yards of Demyx and his smirking face.

"Shut up." His chin hits his chest and Demyx collapses next to him. He folds his knees up to his chest and taps a finger on the ground.

"How- have- you – been - ?" He speaks like he's got something wrong with him. Brain damage, aphasia, something like that.

_I'm fine, thanks. And yourself?_ "I'm really sick of your sister. Maybe if she'd go away, I think I could miss her."

There are a thousand other things to say here—don't you love my sister, don't you dare talk about her like that, don't you go and leave her like that when you were the one who wanted her so badly in the first place, don't you dare tell her that. Don't. You. Dare.

Demyx is quiet and the quiet is too loud.

"I think," Demyx says through chapped lips and carefully-crafted concern, "that you should be telling her this, not me. What am _I_ gonna do about it?"

Roxas—seventeen-years-young, self-pitying, sorrysicksweetheart Roxas—grips onto Demyx's forearm like he's got something (anything) to lose.

"Exactly, man." he rasps. "What am I gonna do about it?"

**[x]**

1:45:56 a.m. Roxas is kissing Demyx is kissing Roxas is kissing like he needs a lifeline and Demyx is most precious thing he's seen for days.

**[x]**

"I'm not supposed to do this."

"I don't care."

"You should."

"Well, I don't."

**[x]**

He wonders why he didn't hear the heels on the pavement.

Maybe it's because she never wears heels—always sandals or sneakers or bare, toes skimming the ground.

But he definitely hears her voice.

"I—Ro—Dem—you're joking."

Where's the punch line? Can we laugh now? You ready?

"I thought you…"

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

"But you said—"

"—Give me a chance to."

"—You love me! You DO! You told me, over and over and over and over—DAMMIT, ROXAS, YOU LOVE ME WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?"

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

(this is a joke that nobody realizes is funny until everyone stops crying).

**[x]**

Demyx wraps himself up like he's got somewhere to go and looks at Roxas in a way that feels pathetic but looks pitying. His sister turns and runs—heels snapping off on the concrete.

"See you tomorrow?"

Roxas doesn't look at him. "I dunno, maybe."

**[x]**

But he doesn't. He doesn't see Demyx tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that or in any day that comes after. It's a shame. He kind of misses him.

Naminé doesn't even show up. He doesn't miss her much.

On a Sunday morning, before Roxas heads to Hayner to worship with a case of Mike's Hard Lemonade and illegal videos from Malaysia, he sees chalk scraped over his house. It's clumped in the corners and brightbrightbright blue, punctuated with a lopsided frowny-face.

I HAVE LOVED YOU, says one side of the house.

IN SECRET, says the entirety of the other side.

And by the front door, there's a little scribbling of poetry or prose or whatever. _Mom's gonna kill me_.

He flips his phone and captures it before his mother élans out of the window and shrieks her displeasure, waking up half the neighborhood.

_you just had to have your_

_cake and eat it too,_

_didn't you? but i'm under the ground_

_& i'm still loving you & i still want_

_you more than anything_

His phone buzzes, and he hears the amused voice of someone who hasn't gotten high in a while but desperately wishes they had. "Roxas?"

"Speaking. Who's this?"

"Your fairy godmother, baby. All of your wishes are coming true, ain't it great? They _love_ you, babe, they really, really love you! Enough to put up with your shit, enough to wipe out entire cities. They really, really love you. So—congrats, kiddo."

"Who is this? Pence? This isn't funny."

"Give you a penny for your thoughts if I ever thought you had any. One that's not about yourself, m'boy, keep it in the clear, now."

"What the f—who is this?"

"Someone who loves you." The laughter is out-of-sync and strangely pleasing. It reminds him of cracked earth and babies not being born. "I love you, kid, enough to hurt you and break you and hurt you all over again, watch you bleed and—"

**Call Ended. **

"Fuckin' weirdo."

**One (1) New Message**.

_hey rox check under the tarp theres a surprise for you--xoxo A_

--And there are bodies at the bottom of the pool that his dad never got around to clearing the water out of, their eyes shining like wet chalk, like dead stars.

* * *

**a/n**: Lyrical credit to Kimya Dawson. The lack of people reviewing versus those who story-alert it astounds me. Review, guys, c'mon.


	4. tripping through

If anything, wakes are worse than funerals. Nam's family would at least have the decency to close the caskets at the funeral, but since it's, like, the _preface_ to the funeral or something, they're cranking out the big guns.

Two coffins. Demyx is on Naminé's left, directly facing Roxas. He wonders briefly if this is their family's twisted version of revenge, and then thanks God that he's so high that he can barely see the body. He folds his hands in his lap and sinks down into the pew, directing his eyes at his lap so that Kairi—looking resplendent in a LBD that's far too skanky for such a serious occasion and twice as nosy—can't see how glazed his eyes are getting.

"Don't lose it." Hayner warns him. He has a hand on Roxas's elbow and the other on the pamphlet that Demyx's parents are giving out to make them feel especially horrible. It's a pretty bad photograph—Nam and Dem's school pictures from about three years ago. They look completely different. _But that's maybe 'cause they're dead_, Roxas thinks, and he has to stuff his knuckles in his mouth to keep from laughing.

Pence tries not to look him in the eyes and muscles his way in on Roxas's personal space, squeezing him between himself and Hayner. They both wind their arms around Roxas's quaking shoulders and halfway succeed in making it look as if they're comforting a traumatized boyfriend instead of a well-we're-not-really-friends-but-hey-he's-pretty-cool-and-I-knew-him-in-middle-school buddy who's going through a bad trip.

Roxas twitches. A girl up front starts crying. She clings to the coffins—one hand on Demyx's and another on Naminé's—and moans something horribly cliché, like "Don't leave me!" or "Why? Why? WHY, GOD, WHY?"

_Why indeed_, Roxas giggles to himself. He bites down on knuckle, but everyone hears the snort ringing through the quiet church. He swears he can feel Nam's girl-body squished next to him, her own gritty chuckles sounding off next to him.

Or maybe it's his phone, unless Naminé's punk-ass voice is coming from beyond the grave. Thank god that the recording on his phone was warped to hell and back from being dropped all the time. There is so much static that, as first, he can't tell what she's saying, but then, with a hoarse giggle, Nam's punk-ass-lesbo-bitch-flannel-wearing-can't-sing-for-shit voice croons, "_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are grey_."

Naminé's mother goes apeshit and starts clawing at the back of her pew. "My BABY!" she bawls, nearly throttling her husband. "It's my BABY!"

Sora spazzes out against his own pew that he's sharing with Kairi and Riku and snarls violently, "Turn that shit off!" Roxas attempts to oblige; his hands fumble his phone out of his pocket and finger the push-pad. The phone continues to ring obstinately.

_"You'll never know, dear, how much I love you." _Naminé wails, and all he can think of are the Greek tragedies they were forced to read in middle school, and how Nam singing about sunshine isn't too different from the chorus singing about the death of Oedipus.

Hayner sighs like his father, pushes at Roxas shoulders. Pence hauls him up by his lapels and clamps a hand on his hipbone to keep him upright. "Get out of here, man," and it's like a Greek chorus.

To his credit, no one tries to strike him blind as he staggers out of the cathedral.

**[x]**

He meets this girl right outside. Her hair's cut close to her head and her dress is a little too short, a little too tight. She's got skin that's a little sallow, a little pinched, a little unhealthy.

She looks, Roxas thinks, like she knows how to have a good time.

"Sometimes, when I go to funerals it's like it's raining inside." The girl says. She pulls at her dress, damp and sticky against her skin with sweat and exhales, puffing her bangs up against her forehead. They're brown and crudely cut, like she'd snipped them off when she was mad and wasn't looking in a mirror. She's attempted to pin them straight with a few barrettes, but it's really not working. She elaborates, "Probably 'cause all them kids don't cry, ever. They keep it in and then it's like 'shit, they're all dead' and realize that they're dead too, or dying or somethin', and they go out—poof!—like candles."

Roxas says, for a reason he can't name except for that's he's high as a kite (and he just might start to check her out), "My best friend and my girlfriend and my best-friend-girlfriend's brother's wake is today. Dual suicide."

The girl's eyes widen. "For real?" She steps forward eagerly, hands fisting in her sweaty yellow dress. He remembers his mom saying something about women perspiring, but it's not true for this girl, this sallow-skinned chick in a sundress in the cold. Her knees are as red and rubbed raw as her mouth. This girl, this greedy little woman who looks like she should be studying biology at some cheap university and turning tricks to pay for tuition, is waiting for something gruesome to brighten up her pathetic little day.

She's a monster in cheap flats.

"I shit you not."

She smiles, rocking back on her heels in a satisfied way. Curling her hair behind her ears (she's got tiny ones, like babies do), she says, "You wanna go some place, soldier?"

**[x]**

Her name is Selphie and she goes to the community college with Demyx ("did, at any rate," she says, laughing). She's a Psychology major and wants to be a social worker, but, as she tips the Budweiser carefully over the grass, "it's not really possible."

The best thing about her is her accent. Selphie is from Georgia, a girl unused to the dead-eyes-dead-feet of New England. She moans from time to time about people being unfriendly and sits in Roxas's lap while some man with an attitude problem that she knows from her familial psychology class named Squall tells them to please take them damned feet off the coffee table.

Roxas, because he's even higher than a kite by this time says to Squall, "Come shake that ass over here, sugar."

Squall makes a face. "Don't make me cut your dick off."

Roxas smiles, squirms, almost knocks Selphie into the cowboy next to him—whatisface, Irvine, yeah, that's it—and says cockily, "You like it."

The room is hazier than it should be. Squall is looking at him like he's something that their non-existent cat dragged in and Selphie isn't looking at him at all. Irvine, who takes Chemistry, is licking Selphie's neck and alternately working his hand down Roxas's jeans, scraping his knuckles up and over his zipper.

Squall, beautiful, beautiful, normal Squall says, "Leave that kid alone, Irvine. Look at him. His eyes can't even focus."

"I'm focusin' all on you, sugar pie!" Roxas cooes. He attempts to release himself from Selphie, who's halfway out his lap in some bizarre position, her face plastered to Irvine's while her bony knees bite into Roxas's hips. She mewls in protest and flaps a hand towards his chest, telling him wordlessly not to move.

Irvine avoids Selphie's mouth and sticks his hand down her dress. She doesn't seem to mind, even when his hand wanders from her breasts to Roxas's hipbone, trailing like spiders up towards his collarbone.

Squall snaps, "That's enough, okay?" and practically hurls Roxas away from Irvine and Selphie. He leads him back to a dilapidated kitchen, tapping a fork on the counter and asking Roxas how he feels, if he's alright, if he needs to get on home.

Squall has a voice that's soft and throaty like cotton. Like thunderstorms. Like hills.

"Focus, kid, focus. C'mon. Do you need an ambulance? That's kind of too bad 'cause I didn't pay the bill, so the phone line's gone off."

Roxas is going, going, gone. His eyes and bloodshot, the baby blues huge in his skinny face. "You wanna hear something awful? You wanna hear something you probably never heard before?"

"Look, kid, I think you should—"

"My best friend fell in love with me. She was beautiful and I kind of thought I was, but then I kissed her brother 'cause I, I don't really know, but he felt like air. Like breathing, you know? Like being healthy. And Naminé—that was her, _is_ her, sorry—got upset and really, I don't know how it all happened. It snowballed, I guess. They ended up dead and I'm kind of already dead."

He says this all in one breath, exhales and says lightly, "I kind of wish I could curl up with them in their graves."

He says, "I hate feeling like I'm alone when there's so many people around me."

Squall rubs his shoulders and says something awkwardly that he misses because his mouth is buried in Squall's flannel covered chest.

**[x]**

He memorizes Irvine's hips on hers. Selphie's back arching, her mouth ripped and raw and red against her teeth. She claws at his back, whimpering and screeching. Some of Squall's growling Swiss music is playing in the background, all about killing and leaving towns and growing up to die in gutters. Roxas asks him to change it. He says he hasn't got much else, and Marvin Gaye is appropriate to the point where he feels like he might vomit.

Selphie keeps saying over and over and over again, "No. No. No."

Squall palms his back and his hands shake towards the door, his eyes closed like curtains. His hand around the knob, he says, "Roxas, you wanna-you wanna come with m-you know what? Let's go some place."

"I want to decompose." Roxas says slowly. He presses his face to the counter and toys with the salt shaker, pours it in hills (like Squall) over the checkers. "Squall, will you use me as fertilizer?"

"Shut up and put on your shoes."

**[x]**

He has to tie Roxas's shoes for him. _Up and over, through the hole_—it takes ten minutes because he can't sit still.

It feels a little bit like being little. Five years young, and he's sitting on wooden chairs in the basement with Demyx tying his laces because he doesn't remember how and Naminé laughed at him when he asked her to help. His nose is red and runny and Demyx has to periodically stop and wipe his sleeve across his face, impatiently telling him to stop the waterworks, it's alright.

Squall tied his shoes and Roxas burst into tears.

He looked appalled. "Pull yourself together, you're a fucking mess, you know?"

Hoisting Roxas up and out of the chair, dragging him towards the door as Selphie screamed, "NO STOP DON'T LEAVE ME". Rummaging for keys to the tune of "PLEASE DON'T STOP" and locking it behind them.

Selphie bleats, "_oh please_" and they piled into the car, Squall's eyes shot to hell and back.

**[x]**

They go to the grocery store. While Squalls examines heads of lettuce, Roxas finds his way over to the Good Living magazines and the clementines, which Naminé used to eat. He presses his ear to the bar holding back the fruit (why aren't i behind there ha ha ha) and asks, "Hello? Hello?"

Squall asks him what the hell he thinks he's doing.

"I have a bad connection, ma'am." He says sullenly, and falls face down on the floor.

**[x]**

And Squall, because he is but a mortal (like Mary, queen of Scots and whores), walks away with his head lowered to the ground.

**[x]**

Someone's grandmother almost pummels him to death with her pumps and screams. He watches from the ground, his eyes sluggishly traces the brightbrightbright blue of her veins against her hanging skin, the pasty eyelids jumping against her bifocals.

She keeps shrieking, "My goodness, young man! My goodness!"

Roxas hisses, from where his cheek is pressed up against the tiles, "You need to shut up. Okay? You just need to shut up."

"My goodness, young man, what an absolutely foolish thing to do—you would've been killed if I'd had the cart with me—"

"Her voice," Roxas practically screams at her, "is in the ground and I can't hear her when you keep shouting so why don't you just SHUT THE FUCK UP?"

Grandmother So-and-So gasps and tinkers away, mumbling things under her breath. She was leaving, now, and Roxas wishes she'd kind of stay because he's starting to hear things that aren't Nam or Demyx or his mommy. There's a faint buzzing noise in his ears, the feeling of his tongue sticking to the roof his mouth, a slight quivering in his arms and legs.

This, Roxas thinks, is what it's like to fall apart.

**[x]**

He doesn't see anything. He doesn't feel anything. Everything is compacted into little I-think-maybe-this-is-happening spots, I-am-here-and-this-is-now-so-logically-what-occurs-is-this moments.

He knows that he's currently on the floor of a grocery store on the corner of Traverse Way and Main Street. He knows that, for the most part, he is completely alone. He knows that he is still tripping face, and that Selphie, that sweaty yellow dressed girl from the funeral, is currently being fucked over by Irvine.

He knows that this, for all extensive purposes, is supremely messed up.

The results are as follows: a) he should not get high anymore, even for quote-unquote 'good reasons' b) he needs to get off of the floor, because it is dangerous c) Squall is a complete douchebag, leaving him alone like this and d)Irvine is a complete douchebag, just because he is.

His cell phone vibrates in the pocket of his jeans. **You have**, his phone says cheerfully, **one (1) new message!**

"Fuck you."

The phone vibrates repeatedly. **You have three (3) new messages!**

**I have zero (0) friends!** Roxas thinks, and he thinks it in bold because he wants too, and because it's halfway funny.

The phone vibrates in his pocket, over and over and over again like Selphie, clawing at Irvine's back in a way that means she wants to leave scars that'll hurt, in a way that means don't mess with her (that one's a hellcat), her mouth red and raw and pulled back against her molars, flashing her wisdom teeth and she screams. "NO. NO. NO. NO."

He thinks calmly of Selphie, gruesome and gorgeous (and molested) in her tight yellow dress that was too small for the current climate. He thinks of her rocking back on her heels, becoming part of her own little horror story. He wonders if she's still screaming. He wonders if she'll cry afterwards. If she'll hate herself. If she'll hate him and Squall for leaving, pretending nothing was going on.

He thinks of Naminé as she used to be, leaning against the cupboard and saying matter-of-factly, "You ignore all the things that you hate, and that'll get you one day, it'll swallow you whole."

Roxas closes his eyes against the tile and prays to whoever's listening that he won't wake up.

**[x]**

But he does, and it makes it worse.

In a hospital bed with an unfamiliar ceiling with his mother asleep in the chair next to him and a heart monitor ticking away while his father—back from visiting whores in Nevada—leans up against a wall, his briefcase tucked against his shin. With Sora&Kairi&Riku taped up against the wall with his father like dispensers, their hands fitting perfectly in each other's palms, even though Sora was a tool and Kairi was a slut and Riku was someone no one wanted to be but everyone wanted to have.

With Olette and Pence and Hayner (like a cheap imitation of their high school's most famous and envied—Sora & Kairi & Riku—with their cheap hair gel and their Polaroids and their habitual disappearances and stuttering) balanced against the foot of the bed like they might just sink to their knees and start praying like the church he hasn't seen since the funeral.

It's nauseating.

And then, like an orchestra's crescendo, it starts up.

His mother, up and screeching about how could Roxas have done this to her, he used to be such a precious little boy, where did he go wrong and oh, oh, it was so terrible that her son was acting up, becoming a stoner, or worse, a _hoodlum_. His father, mumbling and blustering and probably asking why he was even there, seeing as "that boy" was obviously alive, thanks for nothing Sheila.

Sora&Kairi&Riku, standing like the grim reapers in brightly colored clothing, saying nothing with their mouths and everything-and-then-some with their eyes.

Olette and Hayner and Pence edge out the doors, like the main characters that they aren't.

And Sora, future-frat boy, most-likely-to-be-a-celebrity, nicest-eyes, nicest-body, most-liked, says calmly, "What the hell did you think you were doing?"

Kairi says, because she doesn't even like Roxas (can't stand him, not since elementary school when he put paste in her ponytail) and doesn't even like Sora, really, and probably just came to check out Olette, "Yeah. What the hell? We were worried."

Smoothly, Roxas says, "You lying bitch."

She shrugs.

Riku, an unlikely savior in tight jeans, holds up Roxas's cell phone and interjects, "Uh. Missed calls and messages. Voicemail, I think?"

His mother practically dislocates her elbow trying to snatch it away, and his father rolls his eyes sleepily, "Settle down, Sheila," before grapping at her windbreaker and tugging her outside in the way that people who don't want to cause a scene do.

Riku continues, "The number isn't logged in." He drops the phone onto Roxas's bed and retreats to the doorway to stand awkwardly in it, as if he's waiting for permission to leave. He waves a hand towards Riku like he's king of the friggin' hill or something, and Riku smiles gratefully and dips, out the doors like he'd never been there in the first place.

"Try not to kill yourself in here." Kairi trills, dancing up towards the bed with her knock-off purse swinging at her hips. She smoothes down the blankets and kisses Roxas directly above his eyebrow. "Okay?" She trips on her way out, swishing off with a flurry of Love Spell and canned pineapple juice.

Sora is the only one there, and he thinks that maybe he'll start leaving too, or at least fall asleep, but he lunges forward, picking up the phone. He flips it open and scrolls down, his eyebrows knitting together. "What the hell? Is this a joke?"

"What?"

"Your fuckin' phone, man. It's weird. You know?"

"Uh. No. Actually, I don't."

"It's kind of creepy, uh…" His face wrinkles and he shoves the phone into Roxas's face, lighting up his skinny face with the small sheen of the screen.

Over and over and over again, the same words:

_Plz don't stop_

"Seriously, what the hell?" says Sora, and he shrugs.

"Dunno. Some idiot, probably. No big deal."

Sora snorts. "Except for the fact that it is. I mean, you've gone all weird and you've become nasty, man. You leave Nam and Dem's funeral and you've all over the place and we don't see you for what, a couple of days? And then you show up a few days later in a friggin' hospital while your mom loses her shit and some ice-prick named Squall pays your bills." He exhales through his nose and says adamantly, "You've got some problems."

"Shut up."

"No, man, seriously, I wanna—" But he never finds out what Sora wants to do, because he fits the phone to his ear and presses pound.

He thinks it might be Selphie. Maybe Squall.

Instead it's some gravelly voiced, gin-and-grit-for-breakfast mouthed woman on the other line. She cusses him out for a good minute; he closes his eyes and thinks of Naminé, drawing pictures of her lover on his lawn and Demyx rubbing his neck nervously whenever he answered the phone.

He thinks of some girl with her heart torn out, ready to rip him to shreds.

"Motherfucker," the girl barks, "you've got some explaining to do."

And Roxas, his eyes closed against everything, wonder just how far in he is.

* * *

**A/N:** My mind said "Stop. Stop right now. Write your stupid play with your stupid stage directions for your stupid class. Do it. And then go do stuff for Physics." SHOWS HOW MUCH YOU OWN ME, MIND. HA! Good gravy, I'm spent. Any bad decisions, spelling errors, and general confusion can be sent to my frontal lobe, which isn't fully developed, and so is blamed for pretty much everything.

...on that slightly moronic note, review? Please-and-thank-you.


End file.
